Product Manager - Senior - UC Marketing - 701992

Unified Communications (UC) brings together historically silo’ed tools such as telephony, email, voice mail, instant messaging, audio conferencing, web conferencing and video conferencing either on premise or as a service into an integrated solution for end users and IT administrators. Microsoft’s UC solution is centered around Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, Live Meeting, Exchange Online and Office Communications Online.

We are looking for an energetic individual who can help us win against one of our key competitors in Unified Communications (UC) by exerting knowledge based influence at all levels and functions in the organization. Specific responsibilities include:
Competitor Knowledge: Analysis of public information on competitors financials, product strategy, M&A, market share or news coverage and internal information on wins/losses and up to date information wiki.
Compete Strategy: Lead development of content for regular President level synchs on competitor, coordination of cross company activity as it relates to competitor, key contributor to FY11 compete playbooks, input into partner/product planning/M&A/PR decisions.
Compete Readiness: Development of key content to educate field on competitor products, pricing and value proposition. Presentation of content at key SMSG Readiness events.
Field Escalations: Active engagement with Category Management team to support field teams in competitive situations.

This is an individual contributor role but one that requires someone to interact credibly at many levels - ranging from President to Account Managers to Technical Sales Professionals in Microsoft and CIO to Network Managers in customer briefings. The ability to absorb knowledge about competitors, to connect dots between events and synthesize and articulate a consistent and winning strategy are key to credibility. To succeed, candidates will also need the following:
Category Knowledge: Candidates would ideally demonstrate an existing knowledge of unified communications technologies and markets, or show exceptional ability to learn rapidly.
Holistic Strategy: Candidates would ideally be able to show previous experience in developing holistic strategies against competitors (including product, partner, pricing, sales and messaging).
Executive Credibility: Candidates should be very comfortable independently presenting and engaging in constructive discussions at VP level (in sales, marketing and engineering orgs) and have had some exposure to SVP or President level presentations.
Field Engagement: Candidates should understand how the Microsoft enterprise field org is structured and motivated. Candidates ideally demonstrate experience in driving a program out through the field.
Content Development: Candidates should be comfortable and previous experience leading development of high quality discussion guides, teardowns, TCO studies etc.

The ideal candidate will have at least a bachelor’s degree (technical discipline or experience) and 7+ years of direct experience in UC, product management or business strategy type roles. MBA a plus. Key Microsoft competencies are Business Strategy & Leadership, Technology Advocacy, Positioning & Messaging and Impact & Influence.
SCTL